JU professor’s research presents statewide COVID-19 case numbers in new way

Action News Jax’s Courtney Cole spoke to Jacksonville University geography professor, Ray Oldakowski, about the new way he’s comparing COVID-19 cases in Florida.

When you visit the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, you’ll notice it states the Department of Health can’t compare counties because “data is not adjusted by the population.”

That where Oldakowski comes in.

He’s been monitoring cases on a regular basis to get a better grasp of COVID-19 trends locally and statewide.

“Out of the large counties in the state, Miami-Dade has the highest infection rate — at about 8%. Where Duval’s half of that, at 4%,” said Oldakowski.

He told Cole he monitors COVID-19 case numbers statewide every two weeks.

It’s a part of geographic information system — or GIS mapping — research.

The geography professor said that local data shows Duval has the largest number of cases and highest percentage of cases.

“We are [at] about 1 million people in a state [with COVID-19] with 21 million people [in the entire state] at the last estimate. So we would be about 5% of the population, and we’re slightly under that as far as the number of cases. So we are not disproportionately high,” said Oldakowski.

Oldakowski said Miami-Dade is Florida’s hot spot, with a rate of 12% of the state’s population. But he said he will keep a close eye on counties big and small.

“Some of the counties in northeast Florida, they have really small populations. It really only takes a couple dozen, or 100 cases, to make their rates shoot up. I think it kind of demonstrates how quickly this virus can spread once it gets into a population as vulnerable,” said Oldakowski.

The Jacksonville University professor said he wanted to be able to supplement the information in the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.

Cox Media Group